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The Capital Market and Financial Institutions Supervisory Board said on Friday that it had asked the Indonesia Stock Exchange to look into a $299 million discrepancy within the financial reports of coal miner PT Bumi Resources and one of its units, PT Darma Henwa, in 2009.

Traders said the issue was driving down Bumi’s stock prices, which suffered a sharp decline on Friday.

Bumi reported in its 2009 financial statement that it spent $1.235 billion to purchase goods and services needed for production, including paying Darma $455.6 million.

However, according to Darma’s 2009 financial report it only received $156.6 million from two Bumi units, PT Kaltim Prima Coal and PT Arutmin Indonesia.

Anis Baswedan, a director at Bapepam-LK, as the market regulator is known, said the regulator was monitoring the investigation by the stock exchange, which also asked other firms controlled by the Bakrie group this week for clarification on conflicting financial statements.

Bumi said the Darma issue was the result of a human error.

“Apparently, there was a formatting problem in a corrupted spreadsheet in the notes — as a result, three entries were entered in wrong columns,” said Dileep Srivastava, a Bumi director, in an e-mailed statement.

Dileep said that the error would be fixed in the firm’s first- half 2010 report.

“We are taking investor calls and we have already shared information that the issue is non-material,” Dileep said in a telephone interview. “It is a non-issue.”

Darma’s president director, Adwin Suryohadiprojo, declined to comment.

Bumi is the prize asset of the Bakrie group, controlled by the powerful and politically connected Bakrie family.

Separately, this week the central bank and stock exchange were looking into a Rp 6.8 trillion ($754.8 million) discrepancy between a Bakrie & Brothers financial report regarding Bakrie group companies’ deposits at PT Bank Capital and the actual funds on deposit. The Bakrie parent company reported seven deposits worth Rp 9 trillion, but Bank Capital reported only Rp 2.1 trillion in deposits.

The Ministry of Finance’s Directorate General of Taxation previously accused Bumi, KPC and Arutmin of filing false tax returns for the 2007 tax year, and underpaying their taxes by a combined Rp 2.1 trillion. It later said the taxes owed had been paid in full.

Shares of Bumi dropped as much as 9.3 percent on Friday before closing 6.6 percent lower. It was the steepest drop in two months. The stock was the most actively traded by value on the exchange on Friday, with Rp 779 billion of shares changing hands.


Reuters, Bloomberg & JG